Coming Home / No return address on his letter, but family tracks vet to S.F.

Kathleen Sullivan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 8, 2001

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John Clinton was surrounded by his family at Veterans Academy in the Presidio: his father, John T. Clinton (left), brother George and sister Karen Johnston. Chronicle photo by Lacy Atkins

John Clinton was surrounded by his family at Veterans Academy in the Presidio: his father, John T. Clinton (left), brother George and sister Karen Johnston. Chronicle photo by Lacy Atkins

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A portion of the letter John Clinton sent to his family, the first contact he had with his parents, brothers or sisters in 20 years.

A portion of the letter John Clinton sent to his family, the first contact he had with his parents, brothers or sisters in 20 years.

Coming Home / No return address on his letter, but family tracks vet to S.F.

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When John Clinton wrote home for the first time in 20 years, he didn't put a return address on the envelope.

But he threw in a few clues, just in case his elderly parents -- or his three sisters and two brothers -- wanted to find him.

"I live in a military barracks or officers quarters in a military base which is now a national park," he wrote. "I am getting medical care at a military hospital in the Bay Area. From my bedroom window I can see a lot of the Bay Area -- Marin County and the Golden Gate Bridge."

Instead of a return address, Clinton, 58, wrote "Sweet Thing," a name he had jokingly adopted when he was young, and included on letters he wrote when he served on a Navy supply ship in the 1960s.

"It is hard for me to write, so I print instead," he wrote in neat letters printed on lined paper.

Clinton, a self-described loner, said time slipped away as he knocked around the country, working at one job and another. By the time he decided to write his family, two decades had passed.

The letter arrived the day after Christmas at his childhood Kentucky home on Ash Street in Louisville.

His parents no longer lived there, but his youngest sister, Rita Williams, had moved in with her family. Williams' husband plucked the letter out of the mailbox and called her at her sister's house, where she was visiting.

"Sit down, I think I have some good news," he told her. "I have a letter in my hand. I think it's from Johnny. Do you want me to open it?"

There was no salutation, just a quote from the James Dean movie "Rebel Without a Cause."

"Don't scream, Don't cuss and Don't Faint," Clinton had written.

Williams, 37, said tears came to her eyes as her husband read the letter, which was signed "Love For Ever, Sweet Thing."

The next day, brother George Clinton, 57, sat down at a telephone with the "clues" and maps of the United States and San Francisco.

"I just started calling people out there (in the Bay Area)," he said. "Each person gave me somebody else to call."

He called the Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto. Someone at the VA hospital in San Francisco suggested calling Swords to Plowshares, a veterans advocacy group on Market Street.

A staff member there referred him to its Veterans Academy, a residential education and job-training program for homeless veterans in the Presidio, once an Army base, now a national park.

That's where -- the same day the letter arrived in Louisville -- George Clinton found his big brother.

"Is it possible you can get a message to him?" he asked Phu Nguyen, manager of the facility, which houses 100 veterans.

HAPPY TO TAKE A MESSAGE

Nguyen said he had seen John Clinton return to the academy only a short while earlier. He would be happy to deliver a message -- in person.

She wasn't sure Iveta Clinton, who was suffering from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, would understand -- though everyone knew she had long ached for word from her firstborn and spoke of him often as her condition worsened.

"What would you say if I told you we found Johnny?" Williams asked her mother. "What would you want me to do -- smack him?"

Her mother looked straight into Rita's eyes. She pointed a finger at Rita as if to say: Don't you dare.

"Do you want me to hug him," Williams continued.

Her mother smiled.

"No," Iveta Clinton jokingly replied. "Kick him in the butt."

"For that brief moment of time, she came out of that state she was in," Williams said. "Even though Mom wasn't there totally, she knew. If she had one last wish it would have been to see Johnny."

Two days after talking to his brother on the phone, George Clinton boarded a Greyhound bus bound for San Francisco. When he arrived, he took his brother John back to Louisville for a two-week visit.

"We had a good time coming home," George Clinton said. "They called us 'the brothers' on the train."

A VISIT TO AGED MOTHER

The prodigal son returned to his 76-year-old mother.

During that January visit, John Clinton spent time with his father, now 84, who lives with Clinton's sister, Karen Johnston, and her family in a log cabin they built in the country.

Clinton found out he was an uncle -- and a great-uncle.

He found out his family had tried in vain to find him over the years.

He also found out he had a home.

"George told me: The whole top floor of my house is yours," Clinton said.

Last week, a Clinton family delegation -- father John, brother George, sister Karen and brother-in-law William "Buddy" Johnston -- pulled up at the Veterans Academy in the Presidio in George Clinton's custom Ford van.

They'd come to take him home.

Clinton, who had moved into the academy soon after it opened in mid-August, will leave behind a few of his possessions -- a small table, two chairs and a tall black bookcase. He's donating them to the academy.

"I love this place," he said, during a recent interview in the academy's dining room. "This is a place for people who want to get their act together and to get their life together. The counselors here will help you with just about anything they possibly can."

Clinton said he needed to learn how to get along with people.

"Basically, I've been a loner all my life," he said.

"For exercise I read a lot and take walks along the bay," he had told his family in his letter.

Clinton decided "out of the clear blue sky" to contact the family he had last seen at his parents' 40th anniversary party.

LIFE OF A DRIFTER

Years had drifted by as Clinton traveled around the country -- Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville, St. Louis.

He'd driven a taxi. Worked as a photographer's assistant. Trucked antiques to small-town shows. Worked in a warehouse. Cooked and cleaned in restaurants.

"Everywhere I went, I worked," he said. "You don't have to starve. You don't have to go around without money in your pocket."

In his letter, Clinton described some health problems he was facing.

"Imagine my surprise when I was told I have osteoarthritis or joint decay of the knees, shoulders, fingers and lower back.

"No more hiking in the mountains or panning for gold. Over a period of time it will probably get worse," he had written.

"Sitting at round table panel meetings with veterans and doctors and case workers, I have discovered that a lot of problems in my past life were due to minor depression, which I'm also being treated for."

In his letter, Clinton shared some insights he had gained into his own personality -- not to make excuses, he had written, but to explain what he had learned about himself.

His family responded with concern, love and generosity.

"They offered right away to send me money," Clinton recalled. "I said: 'No, no, no, no.' They wanted to take me out shopping. I said: 'No, I'm fine.' They didn't know I just got on disability. That they didn't know."

Mary Ann Williams, a counselor at the academy, said the Clinton family's response demonstrates what is best about families.

Even as she had worried about what the family's reaction might be, she had encouraged Clinton to write, knowing that it came from a deep desire to reconnect.

She said Clinton was "beside himself with joy" for weeks after he returned to the academy from Louisville.

EMBRACED BY HIS FAMILY

"That family embraced him," Williams said. "He was theirs."

When Clinton gets home, he plans to start searching for his 29-year-old daughter, Karen Marie. She was born in San Francisco, and he hasn't seen her since she was 4.

Rita Williams said she was surprised at how quickly her brother had opened his arms to the family he had kept so long at bay.

They had two big gatherings during his visit earlier this year -- one in Louisville and another at his sister Karen's log cabin.

"We weren't sure if it would be too much for him to get everybody together, " Williams said. "But he loved it."

It may be the start of a new tradition in the Clinton family.

"One thing Johnny said to me: 'I wish everybody would get together once or twice a month,' " George Clinton said. "That's exactly what he said. I guess because it's something that he missed out on all this time."

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